Despite a recent decline in attacks, ransomware still poses significant threats to enterprises, as the attacks against several major newspapers demonstrated this month. It is also becoming more capable. In particular, ransomware writers are aware that backups are an effective defense and are modifying their malware to track down and eliminate the backups.
Ransomware down, but not out
McAfee reports a decline in both malware and samples this past year. According to the latest report, in the third quarter of 2018, the number of ransomware samples was less than half of peak at the end of 2017, when it was reached around 2.3 million. According to Kaspersky Labs, 765,000 of its users were attacked by malware that encrypted files during the past year, compared to more than five million that were attacked by cryptominers.
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